It is common to connect an audio apparatus to a computer apparatus. For example, a user may connect stereo loudspeakers to his laptop computer for playing back music or the soundtrack of a movie. As another example, a user may connect an audio headset, comprising left and right speakers and a microphone, to his laptop computer in order to make or receive a call via a Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) based telecommunications application.
An important design factor for these and other audio apparatus is ease of installation. Users have grown accustomed to and desire the convenience of “plug-and-play” type installation. Installing a device driver from a CD-ROM appears to be a thing of the past.
A significant drawback of the desire for plug-and-play type installation of audio apparatus is that it discourages non-standard configuration of the audio apparatus. In particular, a designer typically will choose to use a standard audio interface for the communication between his new audio apparatus and audio applications running on a computer apparatus, if interoperability and easy installation are important. In which case, the functionality of this new audio apparatus will be limited to the functionality made available by the standard audio interface. If the designer wanted to implement a bespoke (e.g., higher performance) audio interface and functionality, e.g. to enable 7.1 channel surround sound rendering, then he would need to provide a suitable device driver for installation on a computer apparatus to be used with the audio apparatus, which is contrary to users' desire for “plug-and-play” type functionality. And probably the audio apparatus then would not function correctly on a computer apparatus which had not installed the device driver. Thus there exists a trade-off between functionality, on the one hand, and interoperability and easy installation on the other hand.